.. welcome to "street signs." i'm joumanna bercetche these are your headlines china imposes $50 billion in tariffs on 106 u.s. products including soybeans and autos raising the threat of a trade war as it retaliates against the united states. swiss re shares drop after a potential softbank stake won't exceed ten percent bad publicity. wpp shares slide after the ad

group opens an investigation into alleged misconduct by ceo sir martin sorrell. and president trump raises the stakes in his attack on amazon he says it may need to pay more for shipping claiming the arrangement with the u.s. postal service is a bad deal for the americans. >> it's not fair for the united states, it's not fair to taxpayers, amazon has the money to pay the fair rate at the post office which is much more than what they're paying now. good morning so we had the news crossing that china are retaliating to the tariffs imposed by the u.s. to more than 100 products we're seeing some reaction in markets this morning you can see the stoxx 600 is

trading mostly in the red after opening up firmer about an hour ago. the stoxx 600 composite is trading down at 0.6% or so as the market digests this announcement that just came out of china to european bourses, ftse 100 is holin holding around the 7,000 level down 0.4%. the declines are led by xetra dax down by almost 1%. that broke lthrough the 12,000 mark cac 40 is down 0.4%. there's one sector in the green this morning, that's oil and gas, up 0.2% we will be keeping an eye on inventories. the bigger story is going to be what the reaction will be to the export-sensitive sectors autos are down more than 1 already in trading basic resources down 1%.

technology is the sector that everyone has been focusing in on the last couple of weeks as the trade rhetoric escalates china announced they will impose new tariffs on more than 100 u.s. goods the measures call for an additional 25% in tariff also target soy and wheat, cars, chemicals, tobacco and even airplanes. geoff joins me on set to discuss some of the repercussions of this announcement. 50 billion sounds like more than what the market was expecting the chinese side to go for >> the chinese said all the way through this that we will match you blow for blow. that's the message coming through loud and clear what we've seen from both of the parties here is very political lists. so as far as the americans are concerned, they have constantly complained about what they see

as ip theft and the way that the chinese have reversed, disassembled technology product from the united states so they can make it themselves or take ideas from it. so the americans have imposed tariffs that reflect a desire to get the chinese to desist. the chinese have said okay, donald trump, where is your political heartland? it's in the midwest. the agricultural areas of america. you can have soybeans, you can have orange juice, you can have tobacco, you can have whiskey. that's where a lot of the tariffs are looking to be imposed. there's lubricants in there, maybe a nod to the shale industry and what do americans love they love cars let's dump some on the auto sector as well i have not at this point found out whether or not that includes harley davidson. as a motorcyclist, that's one

company i'm keen to look at. just a couple points to make both of these sets of tariffs are inclined to push the political positions of both sets of leadership. it's worth pointing out here when the americans introduced their 50 billion, they did say that there will be a process of consultation ongoing before full implementation which looked to be holding out at least one card for the chinese to take that suggested if you can come up with a good reason why we shouldn't do this, maybe we can get around the table. the chinese have said these are the tariffs, but we have not specified a time when they will be imposed that is the chinese also holding out an olive branch suggesting that if we can get around the table and talk about this, maybe we can just have a drink and forget about it and move on. >> essentially someone needs to

be the adult in the room when you look at the economic impact, most analysts will say so far what has been announced will have a minimal impact on both sides, not including the latest number out of china so this is less about economically hurting the other country but more about political posturing. >> it is, but it's also about sentiment and where the story stops. for the markets the sentiment effect will be quite negative. >> as we're seeing this morning. >> as we're seeing there hasn't been huge reaction in europe. but it will be interesting to see where the story goes next. you could argue we have most of the big reaction out of the easter break the other point i would make, does it stop with china and the united states? or does it ultimately go to korea, to taiwan, to other parts of the world that america does have perceived imbalances with in trade terms i guess that's the worry that this is a domino story

as one country that has a sick can't surplus, china gets dealt with, then another and another and another. we know according to the trump playbook you exert maximum pressure on the first negotiation, and then you hope that everybody else steps in line >> we've also got matt king, the global head of credit strategy from citi joining us your thoughts on this topic. we were talking about the broad-based market reaction, and so far it's not been extreme people are pointing back to this story of escalating trade tension as a potential catalyst for the next bear market or a change in sentiment. do you share those concerns? >> i liked your heat maps you had earlier. not so much the sector one, but it shows here as well, but the vikt sto individual stocks one, it's amazingly broad based. we have this puzzle, you have to

say it's about sentiment or you say the market must be pricing in an enormous escalation beyond minimal sectors or companies, almost every company in the red, you can do the same thing with year-to-date or one month changes. so there's been a puzzle in markets as to why has that sentiment shifted. why have we shifted away from buy on dips to everyone being scared and extrapolating there's been a whole series of negative stories, whether it's on the spike in vol in february or real yields going up, or regulation on the tech sector, now tariffs. and do you see those as isolated and idiosyncratic and is the market just reacting to them or is there a common theme here what's interesting with the investors i speak to, there's the people saying markets previously were just responding to the strength of growth. we don't understand why everything is selling off as much as it is when the others have a deterioration and other

indicators say it's more, or what was driving us previous was a strong technical, a wave of liquidity and that was ultimately driven by global central banks. the real thing going on this year is that wave in liquidity is gradually being withdrawn that for us is what explains this broad-based shift in sentiment. >> right we will talk more about that in just a few moments eunice will be speaking to cthe chinese finance minister in about an hour's time before we move on and talk more about some of the flows that matt was referring to, swiss re said a potential softbank stake in the reinsurer won't exceed 10% it said talks with the japanese company are at an early stage and it's not certain a minority investment or partnership deal will be struck i spoke to the cfo of the

business about a possible investment let's take a listen. >> discussions are ongoing but still preliminary. not the right time to go into details. if you think about our strategy, it's about allocating capital to insurance risk it's about insuring and extending access to risk pools it's about positioning ourselves in parts of the world where growth rates are higher. lastly and perhaps all-encomp s all-encompassing it's about addressing a continuing protection gap when we engage with clients, engage with potential partners, it's always about how can we continue to actually pursue this strategy i did not mention technology, technology is for all of us. we see a digitalization going on across the world it will impact the insurance sector if you combine our role, allocate capital to insurance

risk pools, we want to extend our access to risk pools we want to stay on the forefront of technology, we want to make sure we're helping the world address this protection gap. you can put some discussions we have with various parties to the right context. >> is it correct to assume assuming this deal goes ahead, swiss re would offer some insurance deals with these contacts >> swiss re will continue to offer coverage to our clients, extend coverage and address this protection gap >> one last question, i know you can't comment on the specifics of the deal, some reports said the stake could be as much as $10 billion, up to one-third of swiss re when will we get more clarity on the numbers? >> i can't say anything about the timing nor the speculation that's been out in the marketplace. let's let the discussions take place if we come to the conclusion that we can reach an agreement in the interest of our

shareholders and company, we'll have something to say about it then >> we have had a busy first segment of the show. if you want to get involved in the conversation, e-mail the show the address is streetsignseurope@cnbc.com and as ever, you can follow us on twitter, @streetsignscnbc and tweet me we'll be right back after this break. racing isn't the only and with godaddy, i'm making my ideas real. with godaddy you can get a website to sell online. and it will look good. i made my own way. now it's time to make yours. ♪ everything is working just like it should ♪

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welcome back to the show the world's largest advertising group, wpp is investigating its ceo, sir martin sorrell for personal misconduct. an independent counsel is looking into the allegation and it does not involve amounts material to the company. the "wall street journal" reported that the board is investigating whether sorrell misused company assets and is looking at allegations of improper personal behavior u.s. banker john thain has

been nominated to join deutsche bank's advisory board as john cryan faces increasing question about his future a reuters report quotes two main investors criticizing the bank's performance and his handling of the search for a new ceo. shares in european carmakers are down after germany's new car sales dropped 3.5% in march. u.s. car sales jumped 2.5% in march thanks to a stronger economy and bigger consumer discounts. fiat chrysler saw a 14% rise in sales fueled by record demand for its jeep brand all eyes will be on how the auto sector responds in the u.s. session later today. david einhorn's green light capital had one of its worst quarters on record in a letter to clients einhorn said the fund lost 13.6% in the first quarter and that it was not easy to explain why. despite getting a lot of

earnings direction right, his positions still moved against him over the first three months of 2018. einhorn added the portfolio will perform well when the market processes more news rationally u.s. equity funs suffered their second highest quarterly outflows on record data shows 63$63.3 billion lefti the first quarter with the same amount flowing into global equity funds despite the flow divergence the performance of both were almost exactly the same demand for bond funds increased again in the first three months of 2018 driven by retail investors. tjeffrey gundlach speaks to cnbc later today with his outlook on yields, the markets and more get his insights at 18:30 cet. the u.s. ten-year yield

snapped four straight days of declines on tuesday, despite slightly higher demand for bonds. bonds have just seen some fresh buying on the release of new tariffs on u.s. goods from china. we're seeing a fixed income reaction this morning. matt king, the global head of credit product strategy joins us to discuss all these things. going back to the flow data, some of your charts have shown that the flows tend to follow where the returns are. the fact that we've seen such big outflows out of equity markets, do you think that's signaling something about investors expectations of future returns there? >> we need to be careful because the money is coming out of u.s. equities but going into -- global equities, let's call it something funny happened they have not been as risk on as you would have thought for late global cycles, and in credit

money has gone into investment grade funds but not high yield funds. it's been coming out over the last year there's been a pattern that could become more bullish still, but at the same time it seems to us that the money going in is just a refugee from cash. people are saying markets are expensive. i need to be invested somewhere. the dollar is declining. i don't want much risk, but i don't rant sowant zero on my des in credit the flows are basically stopped. in europe we had some outflows to us there's a real risk as deposit rates are rising and as two-year treasuries are paying you 2.3%, investors turn around and say i'm losing money on my risk assets, all of a sudden that looks tempting. yes, a lot of our relationships suggest if anything it's surprising we have not had 1 billion or 2 billion of

outflows some suggest you should have hundreds of billions of outflows at this level we think that risk is not priced in >> but at credit spreads are at tight valuations here. given what you would expect and give than sentiment is turning, we're seeing that in equity space, where does credit go from here >> we think spreads will widen and that the risk/reward is unattractive yes, you come off the highs, but we're close to all-time cyclical tight levels so yes things are good but they could be better. >> is it about how many asset central banks are on here? central banks have injected trillions of liquidity into the system that liquidity had to find a home somewhere with the fed embarking on tightening and other banks looking to do the same, will credit roll over and fixed income roll over >> we're more worried about spreads than bond yields

some of this would extend into equities as well over the last four or five years all our favorite fundamental valuations broke down. spreads looked too tight equities too expensive the one way we've been able to make sense is by looking at global central bank liquidity. when we do something simple, we plop what the central banks are doing and get these good relationships. yes, the fear is if what they were doing is crowding investors out of safe assets and into riskier assets, as they pull back investors may say i don't like these expensive valuations or this increase in volatility, let me go back to safe assets. i do think that makes sense. what are the telltale signs you look for then to get vindication of this type of shift in thinking is occurring? >> mostly we see it when we speak to investors and they say

you must be feeling much better about your market core than in january. we look at that correlation between central bank purchases and markets. in january it looked like it was breaking down. since then it's come straight back into line >> i want to switch gears a bit and talk -- you have done work on libor ios, this time it's less of a credit phenomenon. it's more to do with certain structural issues taking place and treasury bill issuance coming from the u.s. as far as a non-money market trader is concerned, libor ois is this something we should worry about from a macro perspective? >> i would put it in the same context as central bank liquidity. we're seeing relatively modest withdrawals from the central banks having broader consequences than the central banks have been anticipated. yes, that does constitute a greater tightening it's as though we had two extra

fed hikes more than they were anticipating so far it's not systemic yes, we're not worrying about banks falling over the same way as in 2008 or 2012 at the same tie me we expect a broadening out of tensions beyond where they are at the moment it's not really cross currency basis. yet there are reasons to think that as the fed drains excess reserves from the system that we will see thatten tension broadn out. >> in april there's seasons weighing on that, that boosts up treasury bill issuance what you're saying is perhaps in the future we need to keep an eye on how much excess reserves are deposited at the fed and the fact that quantitative tightening is just getting going. >> that's the most significant long-term driver you are draining reserves,

increasing that to 40 billion next month so there's a steady pressure and that's not going away. that's a structural shift. we have the second structural shift from the fed >> do you think one implication is a squeeze for dollar funding that happened years ago on the back of credit stress, this time it's different and then also whether because of expected higher hedging costs we may see different types of investor behavior in the future as well in the sense that foreigners would not want to buy u.s. assets anymore. >> that second one is a major concern. 80% of net buying in u.s. credit over the last year came from foreigners in mutual funds they both just stopped for the last couple of months. everyone is hoping they resume but the mutual funds we just discussed and even that foreign bid, if you're a japanese investor, hedge costs from gone from 2.50 to 2.75 and they will increase from each an every fed hike and then u.s. credit does

not look attractive and we're not convinced you'll get a rebound there. some of that may be positive locally for europe but it's a being global negative. >> matt, i have to leave it there. so many things to discuss and think about. thank you very much for joining "street signs. that was matt king at citi. elsewhere, three people have been injured and the shooter is dead after a woman opened fire at youtube's headquarters near san francisco. the shooting took place at around lunch time at the san bruno campus, which employs nearly 2,000 people. the attacker apparently shot herself. authorities do not believe there are ties to terrorist groups nbc has more from san bruno in california >> reporter: it was past noon at the youtube headquarters in san bruno when the shots began then i heard a bunch of shots like, a lot, like at least 20 shots. really fast, within a minute or two. not even a minute.

two minutes after receiving the call police arrived on scene and started to search the building employees started to evacuate, many with their hands up >> we have one subject who is deceased inside the building with a self-inflicted wound. at this time we believe that to be the shooter. >> police confirmed the shooter is a woman in her mid 30s. the motive appears to be a domestic dispute there were at least three other victims. two found if an adjacent building, all taken to zuckerberg san francisco general hospital >> we received three patients so far. two females, one male. we have one person in critical condition. one is in serious condition. and one in fair condition. >> youtube is owned by google. earlier today google's ceo sen out a message to employees calling this a tragedy he says the families have the company's support at this time nbc news, san bruno, california.

facebook does not plan to implement strict new privacy protections globally when it changes policies for european citizens to comply with the gdpr this spring. in an interview with reuters, mark zuckerberg said exceptions to the new rules would have to be made outside of europe but he agreed in spirit with the new law. it will give citizens more control over their data, strengthening conditioning of consent and the right to be forgotten. coming up, china imposes $5 billion in tariffs on more than 100 u.s. products including soybeans and autos has a trade war arrived? we delve into the details after this break

welcome to "street signs." i'm joumanna bercetche these are your headlines china imposes $50 billion in tariffs on 100 u.s. products including soybeans and autos raising the threat of a trade war as it retaliates against the

united states. swiss re shares drop after a potential softbank stake won't exceed ten percent it says talks about the japanese company investing are at an early stage. bad publicity. wpp shares slide after the ad group opens an investigation into alleged misconduct by ceo sir martin sorrell. shares in european carmakers fall after fewer selling days in march. china announced it will impose new tariffs that target $50 billion on more than 100 u.s. products. the measures which call for addition aal t aal 25 tariffs i tariffs on soy, wheat, airpla

airplanes, cars and more this after the u.s. announced tariffs on $50 billion worth of chinese imports. let's see how markets are taking this news. it did just come out about a half hour ago. that's why we are seeing those four bourses trading in the red after trading briefly green earlier. xetra dax is leading the declines this morning, down more than 1%. cac 40 also struggling in this session. let's switch to sectors and look at where some of the leadership is coming from oil and gas is still the only sector trading in the green. doesn't look like it will be there for long technology stocks yet again struggling, down 1.6%. banks also down 1.4% chemicals down 1.3%.

broadly speaking almost every sector has been hit by this news we had a few corporate announcements earlier, but the main macro story this morning has been about the tariffs let's look at foreign exchange and see how the currencies are reacting here. you can see euro/dollar is trading higher back through 1.23 again. dollar/yen, big currency pair. again we're seeing a theme of dollar weakness there. yen is about 0.5% stronger, hovering around the 106 level. cable is higher, 0.2% higher back up through 1.4050, now at 1.4075 and dollar/renminbi is a tad stronger there, bucking the trend of slightly weaker dollar in this session. switching to picked income

the ten-year u.s. yield is trading at 2.76. ten-year germany is through 50, trading at around 49.8 and ten-year in spanish and italian yields getting hit a bit by some of the equity sentiments so trading wider on bonds. in this environment you would expect there to be a flight to quality bid in picked income we're seeing that let's look at oil. wti and brent are trading down 1.2% or so let's keep an eye on the inventory data coming out later. today sentiment is being hit by the tariff retaliation and a

threat for a rising trade war. let's look atti u.s. futures. the dow is seen opening 450 points lower before the tariffs came out, it was 80 points stronger we've dropped significantly in the last half hour or so it won't be a pretty day as far as u.s. equities are concerned s&p 500 also seen opening up about 40 points lower. some sectors likely to get hit by these tariff announcements. the agriculture sector, soybean futures are trading lower on the news, corn and wheat also struggling on this news.

the chinese vice minister for finance and commerce are holding a press conference to unveil the tariffs we'll bring you updates throughout the rest of the show. you can see the press conference is taking place now. eunice later will be speaking exclusively to the chinese finance minister in about a half hour's time. stay tuned for that as well. british companies with 250 or more staff are reporting their gender pay gaps to meet the deadline for dealing with the difference between male and female salaries. one of the biggest was by ryanair which revealed a 67% difference the widest amongst airlines. financial firms have some of the biggest gender pay gaps with hsbc reporting the largest among big banks. apple has revealed that the uk median salaries are 2% higher for women than for men, largely

due to more female staff across the company's british stores at the tech giant's uk corporate entity, the swrend egender pay s 24% higher for men the gender pay gap is something we discussed on a number of occasion on this program here's what c level executives have to say about the issue and what to do about it. >> we have less than a third of our senior positions held by women. that's a simple fact when we think back over the centuries lloyds were doing business, women were not even in the workplace for several hundred years. it's recent that women have been in the workplace in lloyds therefore that's one excuse or a couple excuses why the gender pay gap is there but it's not good enough i'm not proud of it. >> about 37% of our top managers in the bank are female

we need to improve that. we set a target of 30% we're comfortably ahead of that. as my teen daughter constantly reminds me, until we're at 50, it's not done. >> all of us want to attract the best people. we should not exclude 50% of the talent pool on this. we need to create conditions to attract the best, including all the good women out there >> key issue for managers and leaders is the pipeline of women into the senior management we've got a good representation at the senior level of our company, but i have to improve that pipeline a lot. i'm not proud of that. it's something we have an action plan we're working on every day. >> peter chees joins us on the show to discuss this today is the deadline for most organizations to make the filing very encouraging development that companies are being forced

to report what the gender pay gap is then i read alarming statistics in one of your notes, you said it will take 60 years in the uk to achieve gender pay equality that is quite staggering that's assuming that most of the companies are on board and do undertake these measures to achieve that equality. what do you think needs to be done >> the first thing is using this opportunity to get more insight. one of the differences about gender pay across an organization, we need to distinguish between gender pay parity where men and women are paid the same for the same job verse bhas is cauus where are td women in the industries, and a difference across sectors, which talks about stereotypes and jobs across the economy >> is there any hope for that changing any way that women will be more

incentivized to take on the more male-dominated roles and males will be more incentivized to take on other roles? >> the fact that companies are being required to comment on this more and understand what is going on in the organization there's many things we can do in businesses today from recruit g recruiting, supporting women in the workplace but there's bigger issues as well, from education, where we educate women and men equally, through to how do we properly support women in the workplace, with much wider use of flexible working and flexible working opportunities. >> we identified an 18% gender pay gap now in the uk, i guess it's bigger depending on different sectors. how has this evolved over time are things looking better as far

as the equality gap is concerned? >> it's slowly improved. but as your opening comment illustrated, it would take a long time to get to something closer to gender parity. the government and the uk is not air lone in this there are a number of nations saying progress is too slow. we need to hold businesses to account for how they are addressing gender pay gaps and using greater transparency to ensure boards, stakeholders, internal employees can understand what is happening inside the organizations and what actions businesses are taking to address it >> to go back to something you were saying, ultimatelys a reflection of a lack of women in senior roles in these institutions at an executive level, clearly it will take time for the crop of younger generation females to grow up, get there. it won't happen overnight. they can't all be promoted mir question for you is can

quotas help in that regard from i think quotas is an interesting question it will take time. i think we got to see it from this point, sustain movement in this area. but it will take time. if it's about getting more women into the senior roles of organizations, that doesn't happen overnight there are some countries that have quotas. in this country generally speaking it's not well supported, but people do have the view if we can't make demonstrable progress, maybe go down to a form of quotas i would prefer to see that we continue on this path, greater transparency, helping organizations to understand what actions need to be taken an then seeing that evolve overtime so we can see a genuine sustained progress on this >> one final question to you do you get the sense that most companies that you speak to are actually on board with this and are showing the willingness not only to invest in women and promoting women but all the

infrastructure that that entails and offer things like flexible working, offering certain amenities that would not have been available to women and to mothers? >> i think they are. there's been degrees of resistance if this reporting exercise is seen addres a compliance issue,e have it wrong. this is seen as gaining insight and what we need to do on issues like flexi-working we have a lot of work to be done. it's about corporate cultures and mindsets as well as practices. how do you show through recru recruitment that people can work flexibly mothers are not often coming back to work because of opportunities this is about cultural mindset as well as practice and capabilities within organizations. >> peter, thank you forcoming on the show.

i want to go back and point out that the -- we got the uk march construction data a while ago. and it came in much lower than expectation at 47 versus expectations of 51.4, versus february print of 51.4 this is the weakest construction number since july of 2016. the consensus going into today was 50 much lower than february and much lower than expectations so weak data as far as data is concerned. coming up, spotify's unusual debut on the stock market and a look at whether other tech unicorns could follow its lead by cutting out the big banks stay tuned - i love my grandma. - anncr: as you grow older, your brain naturally

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the chinese vice minute cente -- ministers for since and commerce

are holding a press conference we got a couple of lines, starting with the vice finance minister he said challenges are facing the china and u.s. trading relationship, and those challenges are huge. he has also said a trade war between china and the u.s. could hurt all sides but he hopes that china and the u.s. trade relations could go back to a healthy track. we've heard from the china vice commerce minister who says the door for negotiations with the u.s. remains open. so they're open to that idea they also said china will hold on to the last if the u.s. wants to keep up with the trade fight. the 50 billion yesterday was met by the chinese side this morning. one more comment, he said the retaliation steps on u.s. tariffs are linked to the 301

probe, a forced move they did not have a big choice to make there. the u.s. side forced their hand when it came to the 301 investigation on intellectual property eunice will speak to the vice finance minister in about 15 minutes time or so let's check in on the market reaction the major bourses are trading deeply in the red. ftse 100 down 0.4% we had the weaker construction pmi number xetra dax down more than 1%. i have not mentioned this yet, we do have eurozone inflation numbers coming up in about 50 minutes time expectation is for the number to come in at 1.4%. if that's weaker, that probably won't help equity sentiment. let's go back and look at u.s. futures. it is still seen opening up

quite weaker in a few hours time dow opening up about 440 points lower. s&p is seen opening up about 40 points lower as well all of this has happened in the last hour or so on news of these china tariffs. keep an eye on that on how u.s. trading evolves. amazon shares closed higher despite president trump criticizing the e-commerce giant the fourth time in a week. trump took aim at amazon on twitter before telling reporters at the white house that the retailer was not paying the u.s. postal service a fair rate . >> if you look at the costs we're subsidizing, talking about billions of dollars a year, the real cost. a report just came out that he said 1.47, i believe, or about that for every time they deliver a package the united states

government, meaning the post office, losing 1.47. amazon will have to pay much more money to the post office. no doubt about that. spotify shares closed nearly 13% above the reference price on their debut on the stock exchange they hit the market well above the $132 reference as the u.s. session continued, the price dropped more than 10% to close at $149.01 giving the music streaming service of 26$2. billion or about five times enterprise value the company opted for an unconventional route choosing a direct listing rather than a typical ipo. it means spotify did not hire investment banks as underwriters and did not take an investor road show in the lead-up to the offering it is the first ever direct

listing on the new york stock exchange and could serve as a model for others looking to go public the direct stock listing put the spotlight back on alternative funding. the initial coin offering growth seen in 2017 has shown no signs of slowing down. the pace has quickened according to coin schedule $5 trillion already raised in 201 surpassed 4 trillion in 2017 and bank corps previously held the record when it raised 1$153 million had its token sale in june of 2017, but that has halved since it's launch, and the new wallet aims to increase liquidity among different tokens i'm happy to say the co-counter

of bank corps joins us on the set today and arjun also joins us there is this detrali idecentra wallet that has these different cryptocurrencies does that de-value the bnt coin? >> the purpose of the bnt token is to do what you said it's to allow every cryptocurrency to be automatically convertible to every other cryptocurrency without going through exchange bnt is facilitating this conversion between tokens that is now available in the bancor wallet i want to talk about the cryptocurrency moves that we've seen year to date some performance, bitcoin down 80% ripple down 76%. does the dramatic decline in valuation of a lot of these cryptocurrency assets concern

you about the model of bitcoin and blockchain in the future >> not at all. so when you take a long-term view at the technology and how it's evolving, we see a very clear correction or transition from a period of speculation and excitement and anticipation into the upcoming period we think is more exciting, which is an era of products and purpose and proof. so i think what we're seeing now is the anticipated release of many products from all of these token launches and tges that you mentioned in 2017 and throughout this year actually coming to market with real products that have real utility and allowing investors and consumers to really experience the power of blockchain absent cryptocurrencies beyond their speculative value. >> one of the big issues over the past few months to add to the concern in the market has been about increased regulation,

particularly around exchanges. >> the challenge for entrepreneurs is the lack of regulation because if the market is uncertain, you don't know how to operate, you are much less free to build the innovation you would like to see. so increased regulation is welcome. we look forward to a healthy conversation between entrepreneurs, regulators and to stakeholders to bill the right type of regulation that will take into account the immense power and opportunity this has to offer >> on the ipo space, it's a space i reported on, a number of scams in the space how does that get cleaned up >> every space has its opportunists and its bad actors. regulation is one of the ways. best practices, the industry is doing a tremendous amount to self-regulate. we know that's good for the

industry good for the projects, good for the space. another really exciting thing about the accessibility of cryptocurrencies to the masses, to the public is accountability. looking into the projects that you want to participate in, getting to know the founders, understanding what the vision is of the product, looking at all the parameters that you can personally analyze and making a good decision that you can be proud of >> definitely a space you want to keep an eye on. >> thank you very much. >> >> thank you. let's check in on u.s. futures quickly before we hand off dow is seen about 400 points lower. make sure you keep it on cnbc as our colleague, eunice, will speak tohe t chinese finance minister on the u.s. tariff measures you know what's awesome? gig-speed internet.

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welcome. it's 5:00 a.m. on the east coast, it could be a rough day for your money and investments no five at 5:00 today, we're following three major news stories for you. a trade war with china getting closer the u.s. threatening to slap $5 billion of new tariffs on chinese imports. less than an hour ago china firi firing back announcing $50 billion in its own new tariffs on u.s.-made products. >> when the china retaliation happened less than an hour ago